Major stunt aircraft crashes over the weekend sent a flurry of people to YouTube to both post and view news clips and amateur footage showing the tragic events.
Footage of a Saturday crash in Virginia and much more serious crash in Reno, Nevada on Friday dominated YouTube on Sunday. Videos of the Reno crash occupied 18 of the 23 most viewed video slots on YouTube’s news and politics section. The official YouTube trends blog even made a post about it on Monday, writing the crash was “a top rising search.”
The crash in Reno, Nevada, killed ten people and injured over 70 when the vintage plane nose-dived into the audience stands. YouTubers are accustomed to turning to the site when these kinds of crashes occur.
slicker0492’s video, uploaded immediately after the Reno crash and featured in news clips around the world, was viewed over 1.2 million times. Many mirrored, or copied the video perhaps in an attempt to leech views. But one YouTuber, pukeitup, took slicker0492’s footage and slowed it down significantly. pukeitup’s slow motion version of the crash got more than 80,000 views.
Ty Jacobson, who got another angle of the crash, had his video picked up by news stations as well. Another YouTuber mirrored Jacobson’s footage, and claimed to set up a paypal for the victims, writing that he lost his father in a similar way. This has not been verified by the Daily Dot.
While many YouTubers expressed condolences for the people who lost their lives, simply writing “RIP” in the comments section, others took to making tribute videos, a YouTube custom to honor the dead.
For example, almaas94’s three-minute photo montage of the Reno crash and aftermath, intermixed with photos of the legendary Jimmy Leeward, the Hollywood stunt pilot and the pilot of the WWII aircraft that crashed.
“My sympathies and condolences to the people who have lost a loved one” said ReactionResponseKING in his video about the Reno crash.
One YouTuber, Christianna Garrett-Martin wondered if the two crashes were part of some “symbolic ritual” in her vlog about the incidents, and recapped the history of the crashed aircraft for her viewers.
isayitlikeitis1, who lists his age as 56 on YouTube, discussed spectators observations over Leeward doing everything he could to get the plane to right itself in his vlog about the Reno crash.
Some YouTubers expressed their misplaced frustration over having to watch an advertisement before news footage.
“An advertisement before a video of people dying?! Seriously? Go fuck your hat. Profiteering fucks” wrote brooksbert on an AP video, his comment receiving more than “100 likes.”
Clearly, in the YouTube community, mirroring footage is not as offensive as ads.